Chat rooms represent an increasingly popular Internet application which enables people to have group conversations online. When a chat room user types something in a chat room, it is seen immediately by everyone virtually present in the room. Typed messages in a chat conversation can be seen by anyone in the room or copied and sent to others. A message can be in different formats such as text, speech, image or video. Even though some chat rooms have pre-determined topics, targeted discussions can sometimes wander in unpredictable directions. Though some chat rooms restrict entry, most are open to anyone, and there is usually no way to know the real identity of chatters.
Chat rooms are interesting places for conversation or even learning, but they are also fraught with risk. Chat rooms can also be used by delinquents to abuse potentially vulnerable people. One example is the use of chat rooms by terrorists to hire potentially vulnerable people to their organization. Another very important case is predators that use the chat rooms to find potentially vulnerable children. Many chat rooms have an option to go into a “private” area for one-on-one conversation. Although that can be a good way for two adults or children who are already friends to converse in private, it can be dangerous as well, especially for children, because such private “chats” can be used by predators to groom a child over time, exposing the child to a potentially dangerous online or even face-to-face relationship.
One common mechanism for combating this problem involves members of law enforcement agencies and private vigilantes setting up bogus identities on the Internet and waiting to be contacted by delinquents. In the case of sexual predators, for example, members of a police department may set up a bogus identity as an inviting, under-age girl or boy, then wait for the predators to find them. Well-known implementations of this approach include efforts undertaken by perverted-justice.org, Shannen Rossmiller, and the television program “To Catch a Predator.”
A related approach is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0282623, entitled “Process for Protecting Children from Online Predators,” that provides a user interface that a human nanny can use to monitor what children are typing online. This manual approach does not permit automatic detection of delinquents based on their input messages, but rather requires human monitoring.
Other proposed solutions include systems where every time a person connects to a chat room, the person's registered identity is compared to a database of known delinquents. However, this list cannot be exhaustive because people may register using false identities and people may connect without registering. Also, such systems fail to detect first-time predators, which represent more that 90% of the offenders.
For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0033941, entitled “Verified Network Identity with Authenticated Biographical Information,” requires every user to send a biography. This biography is verified by running a background check that includes a criminal record analysis. The user can then connect to a limited number of chat rooms. In addition to the disadvantages described above, a human has to be involved to check the biography, users will sacrifice privacy, and users are unable to access chat rooms instantly, but rather have to wait months until background checking is conducted.
Thus, there exists a need for a technique for automatic detection of delinquent users of an online communication resource.